For the next decades, climate in Mediterranean region is expected to be 25% warmer over the year than the rest of the planet with up to 40% warming peak in summer. These increasing heatwaves in combination with drought and land-use change (decrease of grazing or protected lands, both increasing tree connectivity) are likely to cause higher fire risks, longer fire seasons and more frequent, large, and severe fires.

Plant functional uniqueness characterises Mediterranean ecosystems, yet the long term response of plant traits and functional diversity to fire activity is still unknown despite the recent and ongoing increase of fire frequency and intensity. From an evolutionary perspective, under relatively stable climatic conditions (the last 7,000 years), disturbances such as fire activity are key to understand the plant traits distribution, the functional diversity dynamics, and, ultimately, the Mediterranean vegetation vulnerability to fire regime change. MEDITATION redefines the nature and the proportion of fire frequency and intensity explaining the past vegetation diversity, and better frames the impact of fire on trait distribution and functional diversity.

MEDITATION has three main objectives, (1) quantifying the long-term fire regime (frequency, intensity) and vegetation composition in the French Mediterranean area, (2) assessing the effects of fires on vegetation dynamics and plant trait distribution, and (3) quantifying past functional diversity and its response to past fire regime and to the recent increase of the fire frequency. The approach is threefold: observational, multi-sites and modelling. The aims are to identify (i) potential tipping-point in the composition of vegetation in response to fire, and (ii) processes of functional diversity dynamics to fire through time to ultimately reveal the vulnerability of the vegetation to change in the fire regime in the Mediterranean area.

MEDITATION will expand knowledge of conservation biology of plant assemblages regarding their response to fire regime at the light of historical range of conditions. This project will push further the understanding of functional Mediterranean ecosystems (plant traits and biogeography issues with environmental condition changes), including both research objectives and managing challenges.